I've just spent nearly £200 upgrading my hardware to a vista-capabale spec. The question is, should I install vista after upgrading the HW, or install XP? I did try Vista for a week just after launch and found it pretty flakey, but with new hardware and the latest MS patches, should I try again?
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Member since:
2007-02-22
I bought Vista the other day, but due to a little mix-up at the school store, I only got the 32bit disc... I have to go in sometime soon to get it replaced with the right one. ^^;
But my advice? Vista's support/maintenance/upgrade cycle is just ramping up, while XP's in the final stages of its end-of-life procedures, and is still on the market only by a tenuous strand of sales.
Member since:
2006-02-05
IMHO it depends on a few things. Using vista still puts you in the early adopter category, and xp is very mature technology.
Secondly, if you are a serious gamer, there is no real point. Expect odd bugs and worse performance. Even though the situation is alot better then it was at launch, I would recommend at least waiting another year.
Lastly, you say you have vista compatible specs, but just how vista compatible are we talking? You want at least 2gigs of ram, a fast hard drive, and a dual core processor. I got a new hp laptop around when it came out, and on modern hardware, you get the impression it is even more responsive then XP.
So, if you want the latest and greatest, and are willing to put up with what having that entails, use your computer primarily for something other then gaming, and have a nice rig, I would highly recommend vista. IMHO it is the most aesthetically pleasing out there (i find OSX too flashy for me), while it takes some getting used to, and the interface changes are fantastic (I can't use the old explorer anymore without getting frustrated).
UAC, as reported, will annoy the hell out of you. There are sometimes up to three prompts for a single task, which is really unacceptable. While the new security archetecture is a long time coming, the front end of it needs some serious changes before it really is usable. Which is why I always recommend http://www.tweak-uac.com/ to people who are upgrading. Vista gives you an all or nothing option with UAC, this allows you to keep the MAC Kernel level stuff going, will not affect non admin accounts, but will allow you to do administrative tasks without it getting in your face every few seconds.
Member since:
2005-07-06
Trying can never be wrong. However I don't believe Vista functionality has much to do with hardware specs.
I have a Bad Axe 2, a Quad Q6600, 4GB RAM, Crucial Ballistix, a GeForce 7900GT...
A couple of days ago I installed again Vista Ultimate x64.
After installing all the available updates, a Checkdisk was started by Vista, which deleted hundreds of files.
Needless to say that after that the OS was totally useless.
I recommend XP x64 instead, a rock solid OS.
Member since:
2006-06-03
Well, thanks for the comments. I've installed Vista x64 for the time being and it seems to be quite smooth.
I did try out Vista in December '06 but gave up after a couple of days due to (I think) Vista not liking my processor/Chipset. I had tons of random reboots, performance was crap and there were just too many problems. (Plus, my machine spec was only 2x MS minimum requirements so FAR too underpowered)
This time around, with better hardware, things are a lot better. Installations/Software Updates seem to be about 300% slower than with XP, but apart from that, I'm happy. So far 
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It looks like a new "locally integrated menu" will make it into Unity, starting with version 5.6.0. There's basically no information about the new locally integrated menubar, except for two bug reports which link to some custom Unity, Compiz, Metacity and Light Themes branches so to see "LIM" in action, I've compiled all these branches and here's the result. The "locally integrated menubar" can be displayed on the panel (for maximized windows) as well as in the window decoration (unmaximized windows). But it's not displayed on both in the same time.
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Today Samsung AV product lead Chris Moseley had comments about Apple's rumored entrance into the television marketplace that sound eerily similar to that which Palm CEO Ed Colligan's said a few years back about how Apple's ability to simply walk into this market and figure it out like they had managed to do after years of research.
What your interface communicates to users can be just as important as what your software does, writes Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister in discussing the latest edition of the 'Microsoft Manual of Style,' a style guide aimed at designers and developers who create Microsoft software, as well as those who write about it. 'The gist of much of Microsoft's advice is that a user's relationship with computer software is a unique one, and it's important to craft the language of software UIs accordingly,' McAllister writes. 'Occasionally, Microsoft's recommendations verge on the absurd. For example, you might not think it necessary to admonish developers to "not use slang that may be considered profane or derogatory, such as 'pimp' or 'bitch,'" but apparently it is.'
"It's tough being a journalist, especially if you're covering technology and living in Silicon Valley, because it seems as if everyone around you is getting fabulously rich while you're stuck in a job that will never, ever make you wealthy. What's worse is that all these people who are getting rich don't seem to be any brighter than you are and in fact many of them don't seem very bright at all. So of course you get jealous. And then you start thinking maybe you could find a way to cash in on this gold rush. But how do you make gobs of money when your only marketable skill involves writing blog posts?" Absolutely brilliant down to the last letter. Coincidentally, I hold no shares, interests, or anything, in any company whatsoever. I'm a freelance translator by day. Not that anyone cares, but hey, full disclosure and all.
"A hybrid solution that takes the best parts of iOS's one-by-one acceptance and Android's expressed and obvious intents seems like a proper model here. In fact, Apple has many of the pieces in place elsewhere." This is a big issue. Nor Android's model (just list a bunch of confusing permissions), nor Apple's model (individual modal dialogs for each permission) is particularly workable - I doubt regular users check them on Android before installing an application, and in the case of iOS, Apple didn't think it was necessary to secure the address book, so every application has access to it without alerting users. Justin Williams proposes a hybrid solution.
"Although current discussion of the Linux desktop tends to focus on the disharmony around Unity and the GNOME shell, the true revolution on the desktop is taking place out of sight of users. The Wayland display server is expected to reach version 1.0 later this year, and is seen by many as the long term replacement for the X Window System, with real potential to improve and transform the performance of the desktop for Linux users."
Mozilla has announced plans to integrate its Firefox web browser with Metro for Windows 8 - including Gecko. "Windows 8 contains two application environments, 'Classic' and 'Metro'. Classic is very similar to the Windows 7 environment at this time, it requires a simple evolution of the current Firefox Windows product. Metro is an entirely new environment and requires a new Firefox front end and system integration points. The feature goal here is a new Gecko based browser built for and integrated with the Metro environment. Firefox on Metro, like all other Metro apps will be full screen, focused on touch interactions, and connected to the rest of the Metro environment through Windows 8 contracts." I haven't checked - does Microsoft allow different rendering engines?
"One of the things that the GNOME design crew have been focusing on recently is creating a new approach to application design for GNOME 3. We want GNOME applications to be thoroughly modern, and we want them to be attractive and a delight to use. That means that we have to do application design differently to how we've done it in the past.""This is the first real release of Wayland and Weston. Wayland is the protocol and IPC mechanism while Weston is the reference compositor implementation. The 0.85 branch in both repositories is going to be protocol and interface stable. We have a series of protocol changes on the table before 1.0 but this branch marks a stable point before we jump into that." Change is coming to the Linux world. And yes, I get the irony of using this particular icon, but it's the closest I could find.
Well, this is good news. "Germany will not sign an international anti-piracy treaty, despite having already agreed to it in principal, government sources in Berlin said Friday, February 10." with Germany on the side of reason - for now - we're a huge step closer to stopping ACTA.
